Torque 3D Development - Release!!!
by Brett Seyler · 09/28/2009 (10:33 pm) · 335 comments
We're finally here. Release day!
Download the Torque 3D 1.0 release from your account now!
It's been a bit quiet for the past month while we sprint to the finish. I've been in Europe demoing Torque 3D to publishers, studios and the press (you'll hear more about this soon). Meanwhile, the whole team here has been putting in a monster effort to bring you the most stable, solid release of Torque ever.
If you've already made the jump, you know that this is a whole new breed of Torque. The tools are ground breaking for development productivity. The content pipeline gets your art into Torque at light speed and live asset updating lets you iterate on your content in tools of your choice and watch them update in Torque instantly.
What's Inside
If you've been following these dev blogs, you've seen almost every feature of Torque demonstrated first hand. You can also find all these details neatly organized on the Torque 3D page as well. So down to details...here's what's in this release:Engine Advanced Lighting* Particle System Revamped Terrain System COLLADA Import Pipeline Audio API Improved Material System Improved Skinned Mesh Performance PostFX System* Improved Water Blocks and Planes Physics (via PhysX)* Live Asset Updating New Tools River Editor Road Editor Datablock Editor Decal Editor Particle Editor Material Editor Shape Editor Viz Toggles Collada Exporter (for Interiors) Improved Tools Terrain Editor Terrain Painter Object Editor GUI Editor | Publishing** Windows (D3D) OSX (OGL) Web (FF, IE, Chrome, Safari) Projects PhysX: Cloth FPS Example: Burg * Limited or N/A on OSX ** Console licenses for all major platforms available separately. Contact licensing@torquepowered.com for details. |
FPS Example? Yes. If you've been a part of the beta groups, you've seen "FPS Genre Kit" as a project in previous builds (including Beta 5). We are planning to build out a much more robust and complete for-pay "FPS Genre Kit" (with improved functionality and documentation), but we want to minimize confusion between the projects. "FPS Example" has all of the same functionality as "FPS Genre Kit" from the betas. What you're seeing here is less content, but primarily a renaming.
Now, some of you are wondering "what's Burg?" Here is your answer...
In a couple weeks, we'll also be releasing Rasmus Deguchi's War Machine demo. Check it out here:
What about...
Gerhard's stuff
From the beginning, we've been very impressed with Gerhard was able to do with older version of Torque. I had hoped to ship Torque 3D with at least one demo of his stuff, but we encountered a few obstacles. Gerhard lost the artist he was working with and on the programming side, we struggled to keep his projects compatible with the Torque core, particularly GFX. Demos like "Wetness", "Depth of Field", "SSAO", and "Soft Particles" all showcase some great artwork and clever extension of Torque. We now have all these technical features in this release and neatly integrated in the PostFX system, with the exception of Wetness. We're going to follow up on that and build a nicer, more flexible implementation of Wetness into PostFX. See the discussion of that here. Much <3 to Pat Wilson and Sickhead for doing all this kickass PostFX stuff, including Light Rays, Scatter Sky and yes, even lens flares / coronas.
Undercity Demo
The Undercity Demo was built primarily to show at GDC last March. We're really proud of what Logan put together for us and we're looking at doing more work on this demo before releasing it either as part of the forthcoming FPS Genre Kit, or as a FPS Example.
Pacific Demo / Forest Kit
The Pacific Demo is built using Sickhead Games' Forest Kit foliage technology add-on. The Forest Kit is slated for a release to coincide with Torque 3D 1.1. This branch is already being actively worked on and you'll hear more about both the 1.1 release and the Forest Kit add-on in the coming weeks. Tom's already posted a nice teaser showing ground cover materials being properly lit by both Advanced Lighting, and Basic Lighting, all with wind animation.
Barricade Demo
The Barricade Demo was originally built to show off Torque technology circa 2006. Yikes. Sickhead Games are working on an updated version of this to be released in the near future.
Warrior Camp Demo
We never got to a point where we were satisfied with the way this looked, so it's been paused until we decide what (if anything) we want to do with it.
Luma's Racing Kit
Still in the works! Luma's been jamming on all kinds of other cool projects, including Rev, but they are working on finishing the Racing Kit in the next few months.
How is Torque 3D licensed?
The Torque 3D 1.x license is currently posted on the Torque 3D page. You can view it there. This document governs the Professional and Studio licenses. You'll find no reference to the "Basic." Why? As I've mentioned on several occasions where it's come up, we were never really hot on the spec for "Basic." It confuses the primary product spec ("Professional" and "Studio" share identical features) in creating a feature delta and frankly, the number of people who've jumped on the "Professional" license has convinced us that a "Basic" version is not really needed. What you'll see contemplated in the EULA we've posted is an "Artist" version instead. What we're considering here is offering a binary only, full-featured version of Torque 3D for $500 / seat. Discounts for owning prior versions of Torque would apply.If you'd like to make your opinion known, log your vote in the form below. We'll defer making a final decision about this for at least a month or two.
No matter what the results, there will be other changes to the Torque product line up as well. Biggest of all, as of November 1st, 2009, past versions of Torque (TGEA, TGE) will no longer be available for purchase.
What's Next?
A couple weeks ago we spun up an official Torque 3D 1.1 branch for work in parallel to the 1.0 release. The primary goals for the 1.1 release are:1. Performance and optimization
This will mostly be targeted at improving Advanced Lighting (shadows), but the uber geniuses at Sickhead and GameClay keep coming up with ways to get cycles back all over the place. Don't be surprised to see huge improvements (over the already great performance) on mainstream hardware and embedded devices in the next couple releases.
2. Usability improvements
We've a bevy of new tools and we're not silly enough to think we did everything perfect the first, second (or 50th) time, so go, use them. Tell us what you like and don't like. We'll keep improving until they are as perfect as they can be.
3. Particle System refactor
This has been in the works for months actually and Pat (with the help of pureLIGHT) is preparing a fully awesomed-out particle system for 1.1. I'll save going into the spec for a separate blog, but it's going to be all kinds of hawt. Here's Pat showing off wiring up 150 point lights in a PhysX "Lightfall."
4. Core improvements necessary for compatibility with Forest Kit
These are ongoing, but expected to wrap with 1.1 and coincide with the much anticipated release of Forest Kit by Sickhead.
5. OSX feature parity
We're obviously a *little* disappointed we weren't able to get Advanced Lighting to run well enough on OSX to ship with this release (see Alex Scarborough's forum post on Advanced Lighting for details), but we're confident that Torque 3D is the best game engine ever released for OSX games. Basic Lighting (what you're seeing in the Burg Demo) is really a very advanced, very fast forward renderer capable of more than any previous lighting system we've had. Objects and materials can recieve up to 4 lights at a time and each light can cast projected shadows optionally. We'd also like find a workable cross-platform solution for physics. PhysX supports everything *except* for OSX, so we're likely to look at Bullet in the next few months. In all likelyhood, we may never achieve feature parity, but we'll push OSX as hard as it can be pushed for you guys, and then we'll push it harder.
The developer community is already on Torque 3D in a big way. Here are some highlights from past weeks you might not have seen. As always, cool, well made stuff contributed back will go into the core for everyone to use.
Special thanks to Sickhead Games for contributing more to this release than I thought possible. You guys rock!
Torque 3D development blogs:
- Post #1 - Kickoff
- Post #2 - Apparatus and Warrior Camp
- Post #3 - Luma's racing kit
- Post #4 - Josh Engebretson and Web Publishing
- Post #5 - Pricing and Licensing
- Post #6 - Pricing and Licensing CONTINUED
- Post #7 - Wetness & Precipitation
- Post #8 - Screeen Space Ambient Occlusion (SSAO)
- Post #9 - Matt Langley and the Torque Launcher
- Post #10 - Chris Robertson and Collada
- Post #11 - Depth of Field
- Post #12 - Advanced Lighting
- Post #13 - Soft Particles
- Post #14 - World Editor
- Post #15 - Pricing and Licensing ANNOUNCED!
- Post #16 - GDC Live Edition
- Post #17 - River & Road Editors
- Post #18 - Beta is UP!
- Post #19 - Light Rays, Undercity, and the Material Editor
- Post #20 - Mass Market Hardware
- Post #21 - Beta: Part Deux
- Post #22 - Marching Towards Beta 3
- Post #23 - pureLIGHT
- Post #24 - Lighting, Terrain, and Cloth
- Post #25 - Beta 3!
- Post #26 - Documentation
- Post #27 - Beta 4!
- Post #28 - Shape Editor
- Post #29 - Beta 5!
- Post #30 - Collada Import GUI Dialog
- Post #31 - 1.0 Release!!!
- Post #32 - Coming Soon!
About the author
Since 2007, I've done my best to steer Torque's development and brand toward the best opportunities in games middleware.
#182
It was asked a while back in this blog's comments just what War Machine is showing off. It shows off how a large poly model is split up automatically when imported into the engine so that the artists can work without previously imposed poly/vertex limits. It doesn't mean that artists can create billion poly models and expect them to work anymore than Unreal 3 recommends such tomfoolery on UDN. But it does mean that you don't have to take time to split up your models and levels several times over during the content process.
09/29/2009 (6:15 pm)
About War MachineIt was asked a while back in this blog's comments just what War Machine is showing off. It shows off how a large poly model is split up automatically when imported into the engine so that the artists can work without previously imposed poly/vertex limits. It doesn't mean that artists can create billion poly models and expect them to work anymore than Unreal 3 recommends such tomfoolery on UDN. But it does mean that you don't have to take time to split up your models and levels several times over during the content process.
#184
To clarify, TGE and TGEA come with a purchase of Torque 3D.
09/29/2009 (6:20 pm)
Quote:FYI, Torque3D also comes with the free purchase of TGE and TGEA...
To clarify, TGE and TGEA come with a purchase of Torque 3D.
#185
In a more general sense though, I found it really useful to browse the iT2D forums before I owned the product. In fact, doing so really helped me make up my mind to invest in it and release Fluttr.
I was hoping GG'd make it seamless and easy as new questions crop up in the future. There (was?) nothing more infuriating than having a question about a product you're thinking of purchasing, finding the answer in search, then getting an access denied page. It's also nice to just browse discussion, and get a feel for support, questions people are asking etc. All this was helpful with iTGB, it was a fantastic decision on GG's behalf to enable it.
All that said, I can ask specific questions in the public forum as I get them, as we used to have to; that's fine and it works!
09/29/2009 (6:27 pm)
@Gerald I've not asked these specific questions, and perhaps I shall.In a more general sense though, I found it really useful to browse the iT2D forums before I owned the product. In fact, doing so really helped me make up my mind to invest in it and release Fluttr.
I was hoping GG'd make it seamless and easy as new questions crop up in the future. There (was?) nothing more infuriating than having a question about a product you're thinking of purchasing, finding the answer in search, then getting an access denied page. It's also nice to just browse discussion, and get a feel for support, questions people are asking etc. All this was helpful with iTGB, it was a fantastic decision on GG's behalf to enable it.
All that said, I can ask specific questions in the public forum as I get them, as we used to have to; that's fine and it works!
#186
Somehow I doubt if you purchase T3D that you'll be using TGE/A, lmao.
09/29/2009 (6:35 pm)
Quote:
FYI, Torque3D also comes with the free purchase of TGE and TGEA
Somehow I doubt if you purchase T3D that you'll be using TGE/A, lmao.
#187
09/29/2009 (6:50 pm)
Making TGE/A open source, should only strengthen the Torque 3D engine, from an upgrade and sales point of view. It's free advertising after all :) I'm sure that those who have had TGE and TGEA upgraded to Torque 3D. I know I did. 
#188
09/29/2009 (7:01 pm)
While I could say a lot more on the subject, I'm just going to say that you would not be making my life any easier with the drop of basic and the addition of 'artist'. 
#189
The war machine model is also cool.
09/29/2009 (7:12 pm)
Wow, but that Burg demo is sweet. Wow.The war machine model is also cool.
#190
I have been greatly impressed with the steady stream of updates throughout the T3D beta. I follow two sites throughout the day hoping for news: GG posts and BlenderNation.
09/29/2009 (7:22 pm)
Kuddos GG! This release is a huge accomplishment. I have been greatly impressed with the steady stream of updates throughout the T3D beta. I follow two sites throughout the day hoping for news: GG posts and BlenderNation.
#191
09/29/2009 (7:25 pm)
what happen to Gideon's run, looks really bad? 
#192
Such a pity that the whole beauty of that release seems to be over-shadowed to an extent by the TGE/TGEA news, I just can't fathom why you'd mention the two in the same blog given how emotive that topic would be on its own.
From a more personal stance - I'm disappointed because whilst I am licensed for Torque 3D, I'm the only one of us on my team that is so rather than spending this evening playing with my shiny new Torque 3D release I've had to spend it thinking and talking to the team about what the discontinuation of TGEA means to our project.
I can understand the needs to end of life products but not on such a short time frame and not when only a few months prior you were saying TGEA would be available for the forseeable, talking about 1.8.2 being likely to be released and giving your customers the general feel/impression that current tech would still therefore be supported.
09/29/2009 (7:42 pm)
Congrats on releasing Torque3D it looks stunning.Such a pity that the whole beauty of that release seems to be over-shadowed to an extent by the TGE/TGEA news, I just can't fathom why you'd mention the two in the same blog given how emotive that topic would be on its own.
From a more personal stance - I'm disappointed because whilst I am licensed for Torque 3D, I'm the only one of us on my team that is so rather than spending this evening playing with my shiny new Torque 3D release I've had to spend it thinking and talking to the team about what the discontinuation of TGEA means to our project.
I can understand the needs to end of life products but not on such a short time frame and not when only a few months prior you were saying TGEA would be available for the forseeable, talking about 1.8.2 being likely to be released and giving your customers the general feel/impression that current tech would still therefore be supported.
#193
09/29/2009 (7:56 pm)
i agree Andy, i am still trying to figure out what im going to be telling my other team members for future projects..
#194
..I suppose that I should download that.
09/29/2009 (8:04 pm)
Oh, the demo of T3D has different things from the release version ? ..I suppose that I should download that.
#195
09/29/2009 (8:04 pm)
Edit: Retracting my off-topic post. 
#196
Thank you.
09/29/2009 (8:06 pm)
As they are two different subjects, let's direct the TGEA/TGE related comments to the forum thread that is started, and keep the focus of this blog about T3D and it's present and future.Thank you.
#197
GG's:
This bolded clause is not in nVidia's:
The question is, why have that "for approval" clause at all? The only reason is of course to be able to deny the ability to put out the press release. So why would you deny a press release?
Would you deny it because of grammar? If so, I don't really mind. You can be editors all you like. However, I don't think that's your intent -
Would you deny it over game content?
- A violent game?
- An erotic game?
- A game that's politically polarizing?
- A game that promotes terrorism against the government?
I can think of a lot of games that would fit those - for example, Deus Ex could be construed as being a game that promotes terrorism.
Or would you deny it only if the attribution was being misused, such as making it look like an endorsement of the game by GG? If that is the case, the following clause should cover it:
but if that is not strong enough, perhaps adding a "In no way be construed as an endorsement of the product" clause should be added.
But as it is, the clause only gives you the ability to restrict a press release - this feels kind of pointless - it doesn't restrict web postings, youtube videos, etc.
Now, I personally don't mind sending you copies of any press releases. I don't even mind that it's required. But waiting for you to get time to read it, vet it, etc - It just feels like extra work that everyone has to do for no reason.
edit:
And before I forget, and it gets lost in the discussion, congratulations on the release. T3D is excellent, and I'm glad I upgraded.
09/29/2009 (9:22 pm)
@Pat - You make a good point about the nVidia license and attribution, but the main difference is the vetting of the press release, not whether it's attributed or not.GG's:
Quote:
Prior to issuing any press release, Licensee shall submit the proposed content of the release to Licensor for approval, which approval shall not be unreasonably withheld.
This bolded clause is not in nVidia's:
Quote:You will include a reference to the PhysX SDK and NVIDIA in any press releases for such Game that relate to NVIDIA, or in-game physics, and will identify NVIDIA as the provider of the "Physics Engine" (or such other term or phrase as indicated by NVIDIA from time to time).
The question is, why have that "for approval" clause at all? The only reason is of course to be able to deny the ability to put out the press release. So why would you deny a press release?
Would you deny it because of grammar? If so, I don't really mind. You can be editors all you like. However, I don't think that's your intent -
Would you deny it over game content?
- A violent game?
- An erotic game?
- A game that's politically polarizing?
- A game that promotes terrorism against the government?
I can think of a lot of games that would fit those - for example, Deus Ex could be construed as being a game that promotes terrorism.
Or would you deny it only if the attribution was being misused, such as making it look like an endorsement of the game by GG? If that is the case, the following clause should cover it:
Quote:Licensee will not use Licensor’s trademarks in any manner that will diminish or otherwise damage Licensor’s goodwill in the trademarks.
but if that is not strong enough, perhaps adding a "In no way be construed as an endorsement of the product" clause should be added.
But as it is, the clause only gives you the ability to restrict a press release - this feels kind of pointless - it doesn't restrict web postings, youtube videos, etc.
Now, I personally don't mind sending you copies of any press releases. I don't even mind that it's required. But waiting for you to get time to read it, vet it, etc - It just feels like extra work that everyone has to do for no reason.
edit:
And before I forget, and it gets lost in the discussion, congratulations on the release. T3D is excellent, and I'm glad I upgraded.
#198
May deserve a little amend there.
09/29/2009 (9:34 pm)
Im suspecting that such clause is pointing to make developers notice GG of new releases ("Torque Powered" feeding) and the writing of it just went too far.May deserve a little amend there.
#199
Congratulations on the release!
I Jumped in on T3D while it was still EA, but it wasn't until this weekend just passed that I actually sat down and really played with it. I must say it's going to take a little time to get my head around some of the changes, however the documentation improvements at each beta release and now the 1.0 release have been much better than the previous engines.
Now I just need to sit down and make my game come alive.
Once again congratulations on an excellent release
09/29/2009 (10:19 pm)
Hey GG Crew,Congratulations on the release!
I Jumped in on T3D while it was still EA, but it wasn't until this weekend just passed that I actually sat down and really played with it. I must say it's going to take a little time to get my head around some of the changes, however the documentation improvements at each beta release and now the 1.0 release have been much better than the previous engines.
Now I just need to sit down and make my game come alive.
Once again congratulations on an excellent release
#200
Nice work, all!
09/29/2009 (10:34 pm)
Congrats! Although the sunsetting should have probably been in another blog, I'm somewhat surprised by the number of people who care. T3D is much better than TGEA or TGE - far more than the price difference. If one really can't afford T3D, use a free engine for a while and try the T3D demo every few months. That'll make it easier to understand what value T3D actually can hold for you.Nice work, all!
Torque 3D Owner Rob Sandbach
indiespring
A small question/request (which I know is absurdely impatient of me) but will you be opening up the private forums to public access as with other non-beta engines? I am desperate to see if the private forums have some answers to a few questions which are keeping me on the fence at present!
At the moment I just get a tantalizing sentence or two in the results returned from my searches! Would sure be nice to read the answers!